Saturday, June 5, 2010

Even though I attended Rockwell's Summer Solstice Bazaar yesterday (bazaar ends today, Sunday June 5th at 10pm) where hungry makeup enthusiasts gathered for the all-you-can-eat buffet of vintage finds, style steals, pro makeup brands, imported makeup brands, organic cosmetic brews and resurrected junk jewelry, the catch of the day for moi was not at the bazaar. It was at Watsons, a local drugstore here in the Philippines. I happened to find this gem of a palette for Php 950.00 (est USD $21.00) at the Virra Mall branch but I'm sure this stock is available at most if not all Watsons branches. My friend, Grace, who showed her exact same palette to me a week ago was the one who reminded me that there was stuff available like this right here!! I just happened to be surprised that it was inside Watson's.

The brand 4U2 is a Thai manufactured brand licensed by BEL AIR cosmetics in the U.S.A. As you will see in a moment, this buy is really good find. Here it is in its packaging, and yes I do have hand swatches and eye tests of this ^v^. The pigmentation, blendability (word? tsk tsk) and texture of this set of eyeshadows is even stronger and more buttery than the Elianto ones I raved about, although I do not lessen my praise for Elianto, these happen to be good on the metallic end. I wish this range had a matte collection.

Nice matte finish box

The palette is heavy-ish, as mom said when she lifted it "It feels serious!". It's really solid when you pick it up. You don't feel any parts of the palette moving about, it feels tightly assembled. You know how crystal CD cases shatter to pieces the very moment you drop them? I absolutely hate that so I'm glad this does not feel like it will even crack after your first, careless fumble. No I will not test that haha! The finish is a semi-matte textured plastic. The edges of the plastic palette are tapered so a you can see below there aren't any hard corners, it has a smooth roundish feel to it when you hold it. Ok, enough about that, onto the product! Sorry, I already swatched them so you can see where my fingers swiped the pans. I was too excited.

The instant you open the palette you see a set of 8 pans all slightly bigger than MAC shadow pans.

As to how deep the pans are I can't tell at the moment. What catches your eye is the metallic gold shot through most of the shades, but not all. The shadows don't have names (sob*) so I'll identify them my own way. TOP ROW from left: 1. A sunny yellow gold, 2. A bright turquoise blue with a shot of gold, 3. A muted golden rose pink, 4. A deep metallic bronze. BOTTOM ROW from left: 5. a nice shimmer cream shade, perfect highlighter, 6. A muted but more golden metallic version of the turquoise on top 7. A strong rose pink with less gold shimmer 8. Last, but definitely not the least, another bronze but this is the MOST metallic of the bunch and has the insanely most amount of the same gold shimmer incorporated into the previous shades. This one is awesome. When swatched dry it looks like it's foiled (when a shadow is combined with water), actually most of them, look!

You know what is even more awesome? The swatches above are only 1 dab each into the pan, upon 1 swipe on your hand that's exactly what you get, then after I did the above swatches,

I needed to remove what was left on my fingers right? So I swiped them on the other side to clean my fingers...look how much was left, all that after 1 dab each in the pan!

So I thought this blog entry wouldn't be this long, I'll only show you my FOTD with the most metallic of all the shades, the last one I mentioned. I have a funny profile picture below because I wanted to be able to show the finish of the makeup base and the light in my room just wasn't working for the frontal picture, so that's this. See the piece of MAC 109 brush hair left on my cheek? I thought that was funny...brush fail! That brush really tends to shed. On my face, Pixi Flawless beauty primer on my cheeks then Clinique Super Balanced Foundation in Cream Chamois, Lancome Sparkling Cherub Illuminating Powder, and on my lips Shu Uemura Rouge Unlimited 908 never fails. Eye makeup 4U2 shadow, mascara Rimmel Sexy Curves.

and the one below is the eye test I did last night with the metallic bronze shade and the highlighter on the inner corners ^v^. What I did below is a monolid, just 1 color but it look like I've got something else in my crease, right? You betcha, I discovered these metallic shades have a two-tone effect! It looks like you're wearing 2 colors because they define your eyes depending on where the light hits. So here where my brow bone hangs over my lids, the deep bronze of the shade comes out, and on the lids the golden part gets hit by the light making it look like a lighter shade. Sorry it's a bit dark,the lighting in my room sucks.